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6.28.2014

Happy Saturday! Hope everyone is enjoying their weekends so far. Since ours was so busy last week and the weekdays have been jam-packed with summer school & pool time (and don't forget the 4th of July later this coming week) we decided to take our weekend easy for once. Sometimes it's nice to just chill at home and play board games or watch movies together. As I write this it's mandatory "quiet time" at our house. Paolina is taking her nap, Santiago is in his room with books (which sometimes also becomes a nap) and even Noé is napping. So I thought I would take this opportunity to pop in and post a layout I created using the June 1st sketch over at Stuck?! Sketches.

I adapted it for one photo and came up with this...

When I bought the Modern Miss line from BoBunny I didn't realize how adaptable it would be. While most of the phrases featured on the papers are definitely geared towards girls, the color scheme & patterns are incredibly diverse.

6.27.2014

I used to really enjoy making cards. I sold my handmade cards for several years, and I was commissioned to make wedding invitations twice. I even went through a period where I preferred making cards over scrapbooking. So I don't know when or how it happened, but I have somehow become much, much less of a cardmaker. I haven't even done my annual Christmas cards for a few years now, which was always my favorite thing to do each year. I'm wondering if I simply lost my cardmaking mojo and just needed some inspiration to get me back in the swing of things, because ever since I discovered that one of my favorite sketch blogs (Sketchabilities) has a sister blog called Cardabilities, which features card sketches, I have become much more motivated to create cards again. I didn't get particularly elaborate with this one as this summer has been extremely busy already and I needed to just whip up a quick card, but that's what the current sketch at Cardabilites certainly enabled me to do.

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I flipped the sketch and came up with this simple thank you note for my grandma...

My grandma loves butterflies, so I started with a journaling card from an older My Mind's Eye line called Quite Contrary and used some of the coordinating stickers as well. I used two different 6x6 templates from Crafters Workshop to make the background, which was probably the most time-consuming thing I did to put this card together.

6.23.2014

Happy Monday! Time for another new sketch at Let's Get Sketchy...and I must toot my own horn because this time around it's one of mine!

I wish I could say that this was the only time that Santiago decided to draw all over himself, but it has actually happened several times...and once with permanent markers. I'm just thankful he has never drawn on the furniture or the walls. Yikes.

Thanks so much for taking the time to look...please head on over to the Let's Get Sketchy blog for more inspiration.

6.21.2014

It's been awhile since I have played along with a color challenge, but this month alone I've been inspired by two. Creating the below layout all began when I was prompted by the challenge at Scrap Our Stash to use a monochromatic color scheme, and then when I saw Palette #169 at The Color Room I knew that I needed to go for the green!

But then my dilemma began, as I wasn't sure what photo(s) to use. It's a thing with me having my product color coordinate with my photos, and most of my scrapbooking is of my kids. Santiago's favorite color is blue and Paolina's is pink, so guess what colors most of their clothes are? I was definitely beginning to think that I should just give up on that lovely green palette. That's when I came across one of the current challenges at Child's Play...Peter Pan. And it all fell into place at that point because Paolina dressed up as Tinker Bell for Halloween in 2012 and I had yet to scrap the photos.

Another aspect of the challenge at Scrap Our Stash was to add five or more different premade/prepackaged embellishments. I used doilies, enamel dots, a chipboard star, a button and a Prima beaded flower center. I also used two asterisks from the Thickers pack used for the titlework.

I love that three separate challenges worked together to really spark my creativity for this page. Thanks for looking!

6.20.2014

This past fall Paolina started going to preschool three days a week. For the first three years of her life she had spent every day of the week with me, so this was a pretty huge change for her. She has loved going to preschool, but now the two days that she is home with just me have become very special to both of us. Early on she started calling Tuesdays and Thursdays "Mami & Paolina Day". This past year she has also really gotten into nabbing my phone to take selfies or she asks me to take photos of the two of us together. I decided to document one of those photos in the following layout which was inspired by two challenges: Drill #33 at S.W.A.T. and color combo #250 at Color Combos Galore.

There was also an inspiration challenge to go along with the color combo - to focus on one of the photos on the above inspiration board. I wanted to use Inspiration Photo #1 which challenge use to use a doily stamp, but I don't have a doily stamp so instead I used a piece of vellum ephemera from Crate Paper's Styleboard collection that looks like a pink doilie. As far as product I also used some paper from Studio Calico's Lemon Lush and Bo Bunny's Modern Miss, as well as more ephemera from the Styleboard collection. I also tried a technique I learned from watching a tutorial on Lilith Eeckel's blog on how to create a watercolor effect on your background paper.

6.11.2014

Summer is off to a great start! I've spent some time with the kids working with their new Rainbow Looms, yesterday we used our season pass to go to the local water park and today both kids are at summer school. Which means I am able to get in some scrappy time! I love being able to just get a layout done all at one time. Opposed to working on it a few minutes here and there, like the below page which took a cumulative three days to complete.

6.09.2014

I'm so glad I stumbled across all the photos I took of The Cow Parade in Mexico City. I've had a lot of fun scrapping them. Since they're photos of sculptures I just feel so inspired to get all artsy and messy on the pages, which is giving me a great opportunity to play with some new masks I've purchased in the last several months. For this page I used two Crafters Workshop Templates...Coffee Splotch in 12x12 and Bricks in 6x6. Most of the paper, including the background is from older Fancy Pants & KI Memories lines, but there is a bit of Studio Calico Lemon Lush as well.

Thanks for looking...hope you take the time to head over to the Let's Get Sketchy blog to check out how our other talented design team members interpreted the sketch.

6.06.2014

Wow it's been a crazy week! Paolina's birthday was on Tuesday, and just when she and I were headed out the door to have a "girls day" to celebrate, Santiago's school nurse called to tell me that he had a temperature of 102.4 and that it might be strep throat. We got him in to see his doctor and it ended up just being some kind of viral infection, but he continued to run a fever for several day and consequently missed the last few days of school. In the midst of all that I've been attempting to finish making favors for Paolina's birthday party tomorrow as well as spending all this morning baking cupcakes. Despite the chaos and major disruption in my schedule, I squeezed in the time to work on one layout. I really find scrapbooking cathartic, providing me a way to release some stress when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

I used photos of Santiago when we were out visiting Dallas in April of 2011. He was just a few days short of his third birthday. I also used lots of My Mind's Eye Kate & Co. Oxford Lane, as well as a little Echo Park For the Record 2.

6.01.2014

I recently stumbled upon a fantastic challenge site...Craft Hoarder's Anonymous. I knew by it's name alone that it is definitely a place for me lol! One of their challenges this month was to use metal on a project...

Noé's birthday was last Sunday so I made him this card. I used metal brads to hold the sentiment in place. I haven't used brads in ages so this was a great way for me to attack my stash!

"What is God's Kingdom like? What story can I use to explain it? It is like what happens when a mustard seed is planted in the ground. It is the smallest seed in all the world. But once it is planted, it grows larger than any garden plant. It even puts out branches that are big enough for birds to nest in its shade."